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CAMPBELL, ISAAC R.

CAMPBELL, WHITE, KINNEY, WALSH, OVERHALL, CROSSMAN, ANTYER, MUIR, SPAULDING, GOLLAND, SMITH, KNIGHT

Posted By: County Coordinator (email)
Date: 4/19/2019 at 14:50:54

MADISON TOWNSHIP
(P. O. FORT MADISON)

CAMPBELL, ISAAC R., retired; P. O. St. Francisville, Mo.; Mr. Campbell was born in Oneida Co., N. Y., May 2, 1798, cotemporaneously with the erection of the first house in Utica ; the day Mr. C. was born, his father hauled the shingles that covered that first house ; at the age of 18 years, the subject of this sketch left home with the intention of engaging in nautical pursuits, and went as far as Albany, and from thence to Pittsfield, Mass., to visit an uncle, where he spent the winter ; his uncle persuaded him to abandon his seafaring intentions, and, in the following spring, he engaged as a laborer on the construction of the Erie Canal; he afterward went to Pennsylvania, where he remained a short time, and then went to the vicinity of Wellsville, Ohio, where he became an employe in a stillhouse ; one evening when he desired to go courting, he turned a hot slop out into the hog-troughs, and started on his mission of wooing ; when he returned home early the next morning, before his employer was out of bed, he found the hogs all dead; anticipating the displeasure of the owner of the stillhouse, he packed his worldly goods in a cotton handkerchief, and, without waiting for a settlement and to receive the wages due him, Mr. C. started for other quarters; he shipped as cook on a keelboat, under the command of Col. Kinney, and finally landed at the mouth of the Wyaconda, Missouri Territory ; there he became a " jack-of-all-trades," tinker, shoemaker, farm laborer, etc. In 1823, he married Miss Sarah White, and settled down to the improvement of a tract of forty acres of land, of which he had become the owner. In 1825, he sold his little farm, and in October of that year, loaded his household effects on a couple of canoes and "paddled " up to the present site of Nauvoo, at which place he remained until 1830, keeping a boarding-house, working at shoemaking, keelboating to the lead mines at Galena, etc.; in 1830, he sold out his possessions at Nauvoo, where he had lived five years, and returned to Ah-wi-pe-tuck, now Nashville, Lee Co.: he remained there until the spring of 1831, and then in April, removed to Puck-e-she-tuck, now Keokuk, where he engaged with Dr. Samuel C. Muir, as an Indian trader ; during his residence in Illinois and Iowa, he held negro slaves; in 1834, he applied to Hon. Mr. Spaulding, M. C, from Pennsylvania, to secure the passage of an act to enable the half-breeds to dispose of their reservationary rights in the Half Breed lands, which comprised a large part of Lee County ; the act was passed, immediately after which Mr. C. organized the St. Louis Land Company, consisting of J. and E. Walsh, of St. Louis, J. H. Overhall, of St. Charles, Mo., and Col. Crossman, U. S. A., and himself, and purchased the first claim ever sold, from Isaac Antyer ; in 1836, he sold one-half of his interest in Puck-e- she-tuck, consisting of a ''potato- patch " of a few acres, to Dr. Isaac Golland; in 1838, he disposed of his remaining interest in the Half-Breed. Tract, consisting of one-thirteenth part of 119,000 acres of Half-Breed lands to Dr. Golland, a man named Knight and Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, for the sum of $14,000; of this amount, $2,000 was paid down, in old chairs, horses, carriages, etc.; he failed to take a mortgage on the lands to secure the payment of the balance and lost the whole amount ; he still holds the notes of Golland, Knight and Smith as souvenirs of the friendship that once existed between him and them ; in 1837, in consequence of the Antislavery feeling in Iowa, he removed to St. Francisville, Mo., where he still resides ; he is now in the 81st year of his age. and in full possession of good health and all his faculties, except his hearing ; he is an active old man, and no weather will keep him indoors all day ; he must be out, and spends at least one-half of each day in working around among his trees and shrubs and in his garden ; he has lived within thirty miles of his present home ever since 1820—fifty nine years ; in that time he has made and lost several fortunes, but no man ever suffered the loss of a single dollar by him ; from the time he landed from Col. Kinney's keelboat, at the mouth of the Wyaconda, until the years bore too heavily on his shoulders, he was engaged in active business pursuits ; he was always liberal and enterprising, hospitable and charitable, and many is the man and woman that had occasion to thank Isaac R. Campbell for relief in times of distress and want ; no one ever applied to him for relief and went away empty-handed ; from the time he killed the stillhouse hogs at Wellsville, Ohio, by feeding them hot slops, to the present, he has never been intoxicated, although he has handled thousands of barrels of liquors ; it is safe to assume that he has outlived at least 50,000 men who were cotemporaneous with him since he first ascended the Mississippi River and cast his fortunes in Missouri Territory.

Source: BIOGRAPHICAL DIRECTORY
HISTORY OF LEE COUNTY IOWA
CHICAGO: WESTERN HISTORICAL COMPANY, 1879

Transcription typed/proofed as article was originally published in 1879


 

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